


In Your Dreams Whatever They Be

by Path



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-07
Updated: 2011-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-27 01:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Hysterical Dame, though you don't really use it anymore, and you're trying your best to distance yourself from your old life. It's hard... but having her here helps more than you can say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Your Dreams Whatever They Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sannam](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Sannam).



> Merry Christmas, Sanna~

You're going by Heavenly Diva these days, at least when you're on stage. It doesn't really sever you from your old life, but it's an effort, and while that isn't enough on its own, you feel like you're more than making up for it elsewhere.

You audiences are small, but getting larger. You're hindered somewhat in that none of the three major influences in the city lend you their patronage. The Sleuths are off the list entirely, you've managed to avoid the Midnight Crew so far, and the single person who does show up with regularity has ensured the Felt never will. The gangs are unsavoury, and you don't want anything to do with them, but sometimes you look down the street to the big name signs and just sort of wish a little.

You don't do it much. You're far too practical. It was imagination that got you the first time, and you've scrupulously cut it out from your life to compensate. That doesn't mean you don't prey on it, sure; the customers have all had a few and are half-dreamy by the time you get on stage. Your songs encourage it. But for the most part, you don't take to bottle fantasies yourself.

At least, not when alone, and not when you're out. There's really only one time you do drink nowadays, and that's when she's around.

Around the house, that is. Sometimes when you see her there with her neon drink at her table at far stage... which one was right, again? You're not totally used to it yet. Well, she sits there under there while you croon to the audience, and you get all fluttery inside and wouldn't mind one to calm your nerves a bit. But you don't, you figure you'll get over it like you did (mostly) with stage fright (even if you don't completely want to lose it, that rapid sensation that makes your knees wobble.

When you two are alone, that's when you do. She brings you glass after glass of wine so light you barely recognize it as alcohol, though it adds up the same, and you drink and laugh and muse about silly things and serious things and things you'll never tell anyone else you said.

"It's called 'Common Sense'," you tell her one night in confidence, voice pitched low in a parody of schoolgirl ghost stories.

"Alright, I'll bite," she answers lazily, in that buttercream voice your manager would love to get ahold of. "What is it?" She's draped across the end of the bed in breathlessly beautiful disarray, hair tumbling in loose molasses waves over her shoulder. If you pause to consider it, you'll lose track of what you were saying entirely.

"It's the fourth sense," you answer. "Of course everyone has Imagination, Vim, Pulchritude. But this is something else, something only a few people in the world have. Nobody knows who, nobody knows how. But it's out there."

She laughs low. "Funny name for it, then. But what does it do, sweetie?"

"They say..." and you lean in to whisper to her, "they say it lets you know when you're going to do something stupid, or something harmful. It rings up like a bell in your head and prevents you from doing it. Like magic."

"Like magic," she repeats, considering. "So how do you know if you've got this mystical sense?"

"I think you just know," you tell her, and then break and smile, "but who knows?" Then you segue, by means of, "but you know who could really use this 'Common Sense', is..." into a story about the act before you, the magician who stuck his hands in his own finger trap and got led off stage in disgrace.

It's the perfect evening, really, and you both shed clothes throughout it until you're down to enough to curl up under the quilt together with her long lean body curved around yours. She plays her hand in your hair (she likes the way it flips), and strokes down your arm. It's stupidly late and the morning isn't so far away, but you'll manage, because there's a little empty place inside you, and having her here stops it up so you don't hear the whistle of air as it blows through.

"How do you know you don't have it?" she asks randomly, as you're drifting to sleep. You can only half-remember your replies in the morning, your eyes are so heavy.

"Have what?"

"Your mythical fourth sense," she says, catching a stray blonde lock and rolling it between her fingers. "Seems to me you saw something that'd hurt you and beat feet before it did."

You do close your eyes, but in pain, not sleep, and turn over heavily to face her. "Not before," you say.

"Before it got worse."

"It's still bad."

She smiles that secret half-smile of hers, lips softer without the violent green-black lipstick that usually stains them. "Not as bad as it could have been," she says.

"I don't have this 'Common Sense'," you tell her, and then it all comes spilling out again. You do this from time to time, when it's built up again, and she always listens in the same quiet intensity. "If I had that, I'd never have hooked up with him in the first place. I thought we were too similar but we weren't, we were too different. Guy imagined me out of his own head but couldn't imagine a situation where he just wanted me? He lived up in his head, but he wasn't good at it. Couldn't imagine a situation where we were just happy together."

You're not crying, not really, but she holds you anyhow.

"He calls sometimes, when his phone's working, when he forgets we're not together anymore. And I feel bad, you know? Bad that nobody's taking care of him. 'Cause if there was one person put on this earth who I know for sure doesn't have that fourth sense, it's Problem Sleuth." You stop abruptly, catching your breath. She wipes one of the not-tears from your cheek.

"Shhh," she says, in her low purring voice. "He's taken care of. You're right that he's got no sense. But he's not alone."

"I know," you whisper, "and I hate that too."

But then you hold onto her, and when you blink, sunbeams are coming through the window and you've slept through the morning, and you're flopped half-over her and she's still there.

She's still there, despite it all. So maybe you still have something for him, and you don't have to like it, but you're fixing it. Sometimes the effort is still what counts. And maybe you don't have any so-called 'common sense', but you've got her. In the morning everything doesn't seem so hard, especially not with her there with that dark wavy hair piled across your pillows, with the soft sounds of sleep still coming from her. She's so edgy and sharp usually that the shallow soft breathing is especially adorable.

And your heart does that flittery thing again like you're afraid to step out on stage, and you guess you think that you can afford to have a couple dreams. Just a few. Just for you.

Just for you two.


End file.
